North Kitsap Choir Members Perform Carols With Their Mouths Closed

Brittany Pratt and fellow North Kitsap Sign Choir members sign the lyrics to “O Holy Night” as they perform Christmas songs at Gordon Elementary School in Kingston on Wednesday. (MEEGAN M. REID | KITSAP SUN)

NORTH KITSAP - It could have been billed as the quietest choir tour on record.

Twenty-five members of the North Kitsap High School Sign Choir, all dressed in Viking-purple, performed at four North Kitsap elementary schools Wednesday. They led hundreds of students through a repertoire of Christmas songs, from “Joy to the World” to “Jingle Bell Rock.” With the help of American Sign Language, they did it all without saying a word.

Well, except for Ashley Larson, the choir’s announcer. Larson taught the elementary kids the signs and announced the songs at each performance.

Under the basketball hoop in the Suquamish Elementary gym on Wednesday, Larson announced each song, pausing when the kids applauded wildly for “Jingle Bell Rock.”

As the music carried across the gym, the choir members shook their hands as if holding a pair of bell-laden horse reins (the sign for jingle bells) and strumming air guitar (the sign for rock.)

The Suquamish students jiggled around in place, shaking their hands and strumming air guitar right along with the choir. When the choir members hugged themselves and shivered (the sign for frosty air), the kids did, too.

As a fifth-grader, 10-year-old Sierra Smith had to sit toward the back of the gym. But that didn’t stop her from eagerly leaning forward, shaking her hands and strumming air guitar.

“They did a couple of Christmas songs I really like,” she said. Smith said the choir reminded her of when her mom taught her signs as a baby. Smith has also learned a little sign language from a friend whose dad is deaf.

“What a wonderful audience,” murmured Karen Johnston, the sign choir’s director and teacher of American Sign Language at NKHS. Johnston stood in the back of the gym watching the performance.

It’s her third year teaching ASL at NKHS and the first year for the sign choir. Johnston previously led a very successful ASL program and sign choir in South Kitsap schools.

Students at NKHS can take ASL for three years. It counts as a foreign language, just as Spanish or Japanese would. All ASL students at NK are hearing. NK’s deaf students attend programs in other school districts, Johnston said.

Choir members range in from freshmen to seniors and from first-year ASL students to third-year ASL students. To interpret the songs, choir members used more sign gestures rather than actually spelling out each lyric with the ASL alphabet. They swayed to the music, too, and adopted excited and appropriate facial expressions for each song.

“The guy in the front was really funny and stuff,” said 9-year-old Daniel Ngyuen, referring to choir member Bryson Breaky, the group’s only boy. Breaky performed a solo Wednesday, interpreting John Lennon’s “So This Is Christmas?”

Ngyuen said he might give sign language a try in high school, but Smith said she has her heart set on Spanish.

Larson said she took ASL three years ago “because I didn’t want to take Spanish like everyone else.” ASL suits her learning style, which is more visual and hands-on. Now a 17-year-old senior and third-year ASL student, Larson has been accepted by the deaf education program at Western Oregon State. She wants to teach deaf children at the elementary level.

The sign choir is a perfect place for Larson to interact with elementary students. The performances Wednesday were fun, she said, “because (the kids) start out doing nothing and by the end they just start copying everything we do.”